What Is Customer Service Management and Why Your Business Needs It

The results are in. Customer service is a major driver of a company’s sales and revenue potential. About 70% of a customer’s journey is based on how well they’re being treated. If you’re running a growing company, you can’t afford to continue utilizing only manual customer relations like speaking on the phone or through a chat portal.

With customer service management, you can invigorate the growth of your company by improving the way your customers interact with you. This can result in higher retention rates and help your brand become a household name in your industry.

So, what is customer service management and why exactly is it important for companies to implement. Below, we’ll provide you with all the answers.

What Is Customer Service Management?

At its core, customer service is the act of taking care of a customer’s needs. This could be handling service requests, addressing their concerns, or providing a solution to their pain points.

Customer service management is the process of handling customer service requests and inquiries in an automated way. This can be done through various means such as customer support software, live chat, phone support, or email.

Quality customer service management systems will automate most of the manual tasks associated with customer service so that your team can focus on more important tasks.

For example, a typical customer service management system will allow you to:

  • Facilitate customer self-help, reducing the burden on the service team for simple tasks
  • Optimize service delivery through workflow, business rules and automation
  • Create a knowledge base of FAQs that customers can reference
  • Assign and route tickets to the appropriate team member
  • Monitor performance metrics to identify areas for improvement

Why Your Business Needs Customer Service Management

Customer service management is a critical component of any organization’s growth. If you’re new to the concept, here is why you should use a customer service management platform for your company.

Are You Customer-Centric or Internally Centric?

Using a customer service management platform promotes correlates into running a customer-centric organization. A customer-centric organization is one that focused on the best interest of the customer. This includes continuously listening to customers and adapting to their demands instead of chasing profits.

On the other hand, internally centric organizations are more interesting in improving their bottom lines than servicing their customers. Let’s use an example. Let’s say you are in a clothing store and approach the rgister with your items.

Instead of greeting you or asking how they could help, the sales associate asks if you would like to opt into one of their upcoming promotions. This is a clear example of a company that bases their customer service model on maximizing profits instead of customer satisfaction.

habits of customer centric organizations

An ideal customer service management system will help you keep track of every customer interaction and ensure that they’re all positive, allowing you to focus on making your current customers happy.

The Importance of Customer Service to B2B Organizations

Customer service provided by a CSM platform provides a variety of lucrative benefits for B2B organizations. The first benefit is customer retention.

It costs more to acquire a new customer than it does to retain an existing one. If you’re not focusing on improving your company’s customer service, you’re missing out on a major opportunity to create continuity in your sales pipeline.

Next, quality customer service undoubtedly improves customer satisfaction. This leads to customers being more likely to recommend your products or services to others, which can help you acquire new customers through word-of-mouth marketing.

Happy customers tend to spend more money with the companies to which they’re loyal. In fact, 93% of customers are willing to make repeat purchases with companies that offer exceptional customer service.

Customer service can also impact the lifetime value of incoming customers. The lifetime value is the total amount of money that a customer spends with your company over the course of their relationship with you.

Using a customer service management platform can help your business leverage continued service improvement to keep your customers satisfied and coming back for more. Finally, customer service has reputational consequences.

Just one bad customer service experience can lead to the loss of a customer. But that’s not all—it can also damage your company’s reputation, making it harder to acquire new customers.  Providing quality customer service can help you build a positive reputation that will make it easier to attract new business.

Learn How Customer Service Management Can Impact Your Business

The importance of customer service management can’t be overstated. If you don’t optimize your company’s customer service, your competitors will take advantage. Using a customer service management platform will ultimately allow you to streamline your customer service operations, boost satisfaction and improve your customer experience. This will have a massive positive impact on your bottom line.

For more than two decades, Vivantio has been helping clients optimize their service organizations by leveraging a unified service management platform. To find out how Vivantio can help you understand what is customer service management is, contact our team today or register for a free demo.

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